An assessment of current alarmist propaganda.

It’s been obvious for some time, that the science behind the most alarming claims about the effects of any putative global warming, is not only unsustainable but indefensible. We still of course get the occasional paper, trying to resurrect an old scare, which has already been demolished, but as happened with both the Shakun and Gergis papers, the climate skeptics simply tear them to pieces. Not only hasn’t the paper succeeded in clawing back any ground, but because it gets eviscerated in public, it actually becomes a propaganda liability. This is the reason we’re seeing fewer of such alarmist papers.

To an interesting extent, the climate alarmists were influential in creating the shape of the skeptic community, but the irony is, they still have no fundamental understanding of it. This has always been the problem in their attempts to exert control over it, nearly all of which have been futile. Every time a new wheeze was thought up, to slip past some dubious piece of science, the skeptics picked it over until they found the flaw and exposed it. Sometimes they had to get up to speed with an unfamilar branch of science to do it, but that long ago became par for the course.

There is another factor too. While there are a number of declared scientists commenting from the skeptic viewpoint, my estimate of it is that the number is actually significantly higher. To my eye, the content and writing style of many long-term anonymous contributors, indicates a science background, and in some cases, people I think working in the field of climate science itself or a closely related one. The anonymity of the blogosphere is letting them speak their mind freely, without fear of any repercussions on their careers. Certainly, I have the benefit of several private email conversations with people, who don’t feel at liberty to comment in public on some of the pieces here. I’ve no doubt that other bloggers have similar correspondences. When it comes to information sources, access is everything, as they say in intelligence circles.

The bottom line is that it’s become increasingly difficult to base propaganda events on sensational climate science papers.

Over this year, the response by the alarmists to this problem of not being able to push the shonky science, has been to back off it and reposition the emphasis on a more populist type of propaganda. I suppose the thinking behind this change of approach, if there is any, is that because it isn’t based on any hard science, we’ll have a more difficult time working out how to debunk it. As I said, they really don’t understand us.

Tactically, this change of strategy manifests itself in two methods; polls about global warming and attack papers, thinly disguised as psychological studies of skeptics. While both of these seem to have some statistical or psychological legitimacy, and therefore the hoped for authority, the whole change in propaganda strategy is, I think, deeply flawed.

The fact that I’m talking about a change in strategy, shouldn’t be interpreted as me believing that there’s some central organisation that has re-evaluated the deteriorating alarmist situation, and decided on a change of tack. It’s more a case of the true believers desperately looking for something to get the stalled bandwagon back on the road, and hitting on the same wrong ideas. With the resources at their command, Lord help us if they ever learnt to think strategically, but at the end of the day, they’re good at battles, but terrible at campaigns, because being hopelessly optimistic about results, blinds them to thinking things through.

While the polls are rigged to give the impression of various specious things, the main one is that the vast majority of people are still very worried about global warming. The results are always headlined in the climate-fixated elements of the mainstream media, such as the Guardian, but there are a number of problems which seriously reduce the propaganda impact of such polls.

The target audience for these polls is the general public, but indirectly, it’s also aimed at politicians, in order to convince them that global warming is still a deep concern of electorates. The politicians know better and in the main, have dropped the environment well down their scale of vote winning issues, and are quietly defunding green subsidies and initiatives. Money really is tight and needed to remedy more immediate problems.

Most people are now indifferent to climate scares, a phenomenon known as climate fatigue in publishing circles, so the poll stories are being carried in a decreasing number of mainstream outlets. Progressively, the propaganda is only getting out to the true believers, who’re not the audience it’s aimed at. The reality is that we’re living in the come down times of post-Copenhagen euphoria. Whether the majority of people still believe in global warming is debatable, but what’s beyond question, is that they no longer care about it. It’s at the bottom of most people’s priority list, because of economic hard times.

Asking people to worry about the environment or their remote descendents, when they’re coping with a shaky economy, higher taxes, job insecurity and looking at utility bills they’re struggling to pay, is a poor move, especially when there are considerably better ones on the board.

They’re like those elections held periodically by dictators. They always get 99% of the votes, but everyone knows it’s humbug and ignores it. The obviously unrealistic polls are frittering away what’s left of their credibility. It’s for that reason, I feel these polls will actually become infowar liabilities.

The so-called psychological studies, I find interesting and encouraging for a number of reasons. Politically, it’s the usual stereotyping of the opposition, a way of dehumanising, and therefore writing off their influence as insignificant. There’s nothing new about the particular stereotypes they’re trying to shoehorn us into, just that they’re trying to come up with some pseudo-psychological justification for it.

There is a real perception issue here, on both sides of the fence, which has to be recognised. The climate realists think that such stereotypes are just deliberate propaganda ad hominems, meant to marginalise us and nothing more. However, the alarmists have spent so many years pushing them, that they’ve long ago come to think of them as the reality. It’s how they actually think we are. It’s another one of their unfounded beliefs, and it’s been our asset for some time. If you don’t really understand the opposition, how can you possibly design strategies to beat them?

The effect such studies are intended to have on the average person is quite simple; if you don’t believe in global warming, then you’re in danger of being seen as belonging to one of those deranged stereotype groupings, and you wouldn’t want that, would you? It is a subtle form of intimidation. Again though, for the ordinary person, it’s not a question of whether they believe in it or not, but that they no longer care about it.

The tone and intensity of these studies is becoming increasingly aggressive. The word denier is now appearing in published papers and the vileness of the stereotypes we’re accused of being, is getting worse. At face value, the reason for this would appear to be frustration at the lack of success in using them, but the truth is a bit more subtle. They’re fighting a losing battle with public opinion and they know it. Their support is melting away more rapidly every day and most frighteningly, they can’t seem to find a way of stopping that, never mind slowing it down.

Simplistically, it’s just name calling and they need to do it for reasons of catharsis. Psychologically, it’s a form of self-indulgent displacement activity. Giving us what they think is a bloody good kicking, makes up for their feeling of helplessness in the face of the grim reality of their situation. We’re their hate objects, the ones they totally blame for the collapse of their cult. They’re in the second stage of the death of their belief system; anger. Calling us bad names is a release of that anger and it’s going to get worse, considerably worse.

I’ve no problem with that, and the worse it gets, the happier I’ll be. We should be prepared to do exactly nothing to stop that inevitable escalation. We should help it along by doings things like running the Climate Prat of the Year award. Humour in the face of fanaticism, is guaranteed to enrage a fanatic every time.

The only ground worth fighting for in this debate, is the middle ground, commonly known as public opinion. The harder they fight and the more extreme the propaganda becomes, the more they’ll alienate the common person, who’ll begin to see them for what they truly are; fanatics. I said in a previous piece on fanatics, “a fanatic’s real strength is that they’ll never give up, never rethink their position, are not proportionate and above all; don’t know when to stop.” It is also their greatest weakness.

Gleick and the Heartland debacle will not be an isolated event. Over the next year or two, we’re going to see some propaganda disasters, produced by the fury of a dying political movement and that natural compulsion of fanatics towards excess. All we have to do is wait, watch and be ready to exploit such events ruthlessly.

More importantly, in the long-term that same shrill stridency will also gradually isolate them from the politicians and policy makers, which will move them inexorably towards the political fringe.

The executive summary of this assessment is that all that’s currently happening, is the propaganda is mainly funneling in our direction and because of the gradual shutting down of mainstream outlets, not getting out to the vast majority of the populace. On the occasions it does, it’s such a badly formed and inappropriate message, it’s actually contra-productive.

In the long term, the real damage that will be caused by this clumsy infowar strategy, is that it will start closing down propaganda outlets. As the polls and studies begin to look more and more like vitriolic political invective, how much longer will the supposedly respectable science journals feel able to continue publishing them? As the alarmist message being pushed at an increasingly disinterested public gets harsher, more threatening and more extreme, how long will the climate unaligned organs of the mainstream media think they’re newsworthy enough to run?

Comments

The one side-effect of this whole debacle though, sadly for me, is the lack of crediblitly that is going to be left with many of the major scientific journals.

It’s been a bit of an eye opener for me the whole climate change mess; i once thought science was supposed to be above this kind of petty politik, of course you get in fighting etc, we’re still human (well most of us, anyway), but to see the journals ‘fall’ so easily has been disheartening.

Sure the more ‘specialist’ ones (luckily including those in my field) have remained un tarnished, but it’s certainly ruined the credibility of the mainstream ones in the eyes of many scientists, not just the skeptics.

The one good aspect of this, from a scientists perspective, is that it should encourage increased scepticism across all fields, and remove the effect of ‘distance’ from reading or reviewing others work; which can only be a good thing for science in the long run.

You’re right – the average person doesn’t care. What they DO care about are outrageous electricity bills and the rising cost of living and basic necessities.

The Australian Labor Government introduced a carbon dioxide tax on July 1st and in past weeks has been crowing that “the sky hasn’t fallen in”. Well, it’s now beginning to crash around their ears. The power bills are starting to land in peoples’ mail boxes and they are screaming blue murder. One news report this week cited a family whose quarterly power bill has always been under $300 – now it’s over $1,100. Another family has a bill that has doubled to $1,200 with a further 20% rise predicted.

This week I was in a mainland coastal fishing town and the local Fishermens’ Co-op was in dire trouble with their monthly power bill set to rise by $24,000. When their local MP asked the Prime Minister in Parliament how these small businessmen could be expected to absorb such costs, she blithely told them to “pass it on to consumers”. The commercial fishing industry doesn’t work like that, and neither do many other primary producers who are big users of refrigeration and transport.

This is what is guaranteed to get the electorate’s attention, and they aren’t listening to the climate propaganda at all.

While the general assumption has been that PM Gillard caved in to Greens’ pressure in forming a minority government, recent revelations about the depth and scope of corruption in the Union Movement/Labor Party has given us cause to believe that the Carbon Tax and so-called Green Funding were seen as a clutch of 24ct golden goose eggs which, by nefarious means of laundering such tied-grants, have been funnelled into the Union Movement, their contractors, developers, cronies, prick-relations, and anyone else for whom favours were owed or expected.

That is why Gillard and her Treasurer are so confident that the law will never be repealed – too much money at stake, too many climate-oriented investments made, too many taxpayer grants dished out, thousands of Climate Dept bureaucrats employed – the Unions will have a field-day.

This week Labor has dropped the Carbon Price from a Green-mandated $23 a tonne and linked it to the EU price, allowing Australians to trade carbon credits on the EU Carbon markets. No mention by the MSM of Gore’s crash-and-burn Carbon Xchange or the EU’s price nose-diving.

The climate propaganda machine has run its course here – it’s no longer seen as important. We’re down to the nitty gritty of putting food on the table and fuel in our cars. With the exception of hucksters like the former Goldman Sachs General Manager turned Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull still pushing the climate barrow uphill (he wants to keep the tax when they get into government), and the occasional “eccentric” science boffin who wants to build sunshades over the Great Barrier Reef, nobody is paying attention to any of them these days.

Nor are people paying proper attention when Electricity Retailers are pushing ‘smart-meters’ on the grounds that the poorer households, that 30 % who don’t have the luxury of air-conditioning, are subsidising the ‘greedy’ users who do have A/C, but with these super-duper meters the Energy Companies can turn off such appliances in wealthier households. Yippee – a level playing field – the great unwashed always like to see the toffs taken down a peg or two. They simply don’t understand the implications for themselves and the MSM are in no hurry to enlighten them.

This is the most shameful and corrupt period in our modern history as a “free” nation.

Rick, it’s been just over 7 weeks since the tax came in – most residential utility bills are quarterly. The fall-out hasn’t begun yet.

Adding to the insult is the fact that once the carbon tax is levied on an account then the Goods & Services Tax is added on top of that. They are adding another tax of 10% on top of the carbon tax. When does a fraudulent tax on a trace atmospheric gas get to constitute in ANY shape or form, a ‘goods’ or a ‘service’?

I wish your ‘Melbourne resident’ (and all the others incapable of logical, independent thought) would wake from their slumbers. Once the scales fall from their eyes, they cannot ‘un-know’ what has long been so obvious to the rest of us.

Just one point to ponder – most of the Union players who have presided over utterly unaccountable union accounts worth many millions, are also sitting on the Boards of Industry Super Funds worth Trillions.

Check out who the major investors have been in our completely useless mutli-billion dollar desalinisation plants. That’s only one example.

This has gone way beyond being the brain-child of a few fanatical bleeding-heart eco-warriors – Gillard and her union cronies are in their element – and they can always blame the Greens when it all turns to dust.

Oh, they just keep digging their hole, don’t they? It’s funny how things all come together. Gillard’s successful put down of her dubious past coincided with the CFMEU union’s ugly defiance of the supreme court ruling and the obvious link with union leader’s theft of member’s funds. Whoops…

Labor’s dismissal of the Carbon Tax as a contributor to power bills will simply make the electorate more angry.

As for the member dot Goldman Sachs, doesn’t he realise that being Labor’s preferred Liberal leader is an insult? Maybe he really did approach the Labor party to run for them.

The baseball bats are already getting polished in readiness for next year’s election…

A great analysis, Pointman. I have been following your posts since stumbling across them via the JoNova site ages ago, and wish to express my appreciation to you for expressing so eloquently sentiments I also feel. Your insight is IMHO spot on. On a related note, news out today: “New Zealand climate change denial defeated…
The High Court decision on the Judicial Review of NIWA’s New Zealand temperature record was issued today. I will comment in more depth next week but interested readers can read the judgement themselves at http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/nz-climate-science-education-trust-v-niwa-ltd/at_download/fileDecision

“…. NIWA had sole responsibility for the preparation and maintenance of the New Zealand temperature record. However, it has consistently been NIWA’s position that, while it has maintained a national climate database and has published the 7SS since 1992, it has not designated that as an official New Zealand temperature record. Dr Wratt explains that the reference to “the New Zealand temperature record” on NIWA’s website is used in a generic way to encompass a multitude of pieces of information which, together, compromise a record of New Zealand’s temperature.”

It’s either the NZ temp record or it isn’t. As the “sole responsibilty” for temp records is NIWA’s, then how could it NOT be official? Is this the record that the NZ Legislature cited to justify NZ carbon policies?

Did your politicians and their umpteen advisers decide to impose carbon taxes on the basis of some “generic” token data of the only taxpayer funded body entrusted to faithfully record such temperatures?

Bloody hell – that means Prof Bob Carter and his colleagues are lumped with all costs to add insult to injury. I hope their supporters get a fund organised to pay those court costs.

“Wratt explains that the reference to “the New Zealand temperature record” on NIWA’s website is used in a generic way to encompass a multitude of pieces of information which, together, compromise a record of New Zealand’s temperature.”

From a dictionary entry for “compromise”:

[verb]
2 expediently accept standards that are lower than is desirable: we were not prepared to compromise on safety
[with object] weaken or harm by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable: he won’t accept any decisions which compromise his principles
[with object] bring into disrepute or danger by indiscreet, foolish, or reckless behaviour: situations in which his troops could be compromised

That quote was copied & pasted from the link NZPete posted to the ‘Courts of NZ Govt’ site.

I thought perhaps the word should have been ‘comprise’ not ‘compromise’, but either way the entire judgement is a load of nonsense and sets a precedent for any other case that is brought against the fraudsters who perpetrate this climate scam. Awarding of all court costs against a complainant is also a great deterrent for any who seek justice from the heavily weighted System.

As usual, a great insight. I believe (there’s that word again:) the warmists have had it far too easy for far too long. Anyone who understands the (dearth of) science in the climate (non)debate has only ever engaged once or twice before leaving them to their echo chambers. I offer the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” whenever a climate related piece circles the bowl – no-one in their right mind would engage with the zealots (paid or not) in that zombie tank.
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I rest my case ;)

I just moved out of Missouri (home state) to Florida and I can tell you that it wasn’t a moment too soon. To echo what blackswan was saying, they are increasing people’s electricity bills to phase out coal…and in Missouri the rate increase is 15% or more!

All of this takes effect AFTER the election of course. People will start caring quite a bit once they realize that the reason they are paying more for electricity when times are rough for everyone is because of deluded green fools…which is more the reason to cut fun at them now and get the implosion to happen sooner.

People just don’t care about over-educated fools in their ivory towers pontificating. They never really have all that much, and they at one point thought it sounded reasonable. But it does not the second the economy turns south and the question of economic strangulation is a very large factor becomes paramount. So yes, the economy is to blame, but also over-saturation about the “various ways the world will end” that we have been bombarded by over the years. Scare tactics have a habbit of backfiring in the end when we hear the same stories about the end of the world over and over again, people become complacent and stop listening to it.

Which is why global warming (or whatever you want to call it) will die quickly and perhaps with a lot of zealots going down the path you described pointman.

If you’ve read the “about me” for the blog, you’ll know I got sucked into the climate wars because of the slow death and misery, environmental policies were inflicting on the developing world.

Back then, never in my wildest dreams, did I think that the same policies would hit so hard on the ordinary families in the developed world. It’s the people at the bottom, already struggling with hard times, who’ll be switching off the heating this coming Winter.

We are fighting for good, against a thing whose effects are anti-human.

My take is that the warmist crowd will simply revert to form through implementing a more radical agendum of direct action when the subsidies all go away and people decide across the board to address the real issues in earnest. This is what happened in 1968 and it will happen that way now.

Hi Pointman. Long time no post but have been following you through your email alerts. Been rather busy myself lately trying to bring down a dud PM and hopefully her inept Government as well. This could help scuttle the AGW/carbon tax scam in Ausralia if we can get rid of a few of the union crooks in our Parliament I’ve put the cat amongst the pigeons today with cross-posts at Michael Smith News.com and Kangaroo Court of Australia. Check it out and if you’re interested will send it to you to post. The more it is spread the better. Cheers ,hillbilly

You might also like my take on Gillard’s reasons for her “ambush” press conference
at same link:. Black Swan will attest we had a wonderful free running brainstoming day on August 26th and this is what I gained from it:- my comment August 27 2012 @ 2-52pmt

I’m working on a beauty to send to Fairfax Journalists on what they should have asked Gillard based entirely on what was in their own SMH that same day in the editorial and Phil Coorey’s article. Investigative journalists?? LOL.

No sign of CAGW in Tasmania today. It’s freezing our butts off, but our hearts are warm!.
Cheeers to all H/B.

Pointman: you write: “We still of course get the occasional paper, trying to resurrect an old scare, which has already been demolished, but as happened with both the Shakun and Gergis papers, the climate skeptics simply tear them to pieces. Not only hasn’t the paper succeeded in clawing back any ground, but because it gets eviscerated in public, it actually becomes a propaganda liability. This is the reason we’re seeing fewer of such alarmist papers.”

While I agree with you in general, that hasn’t stopped Eric Steig, who thinks he can count on the IPCC to resurrect the finding in his largely-refuted paper:

The fact is, narcissists *never* understand other people, because they are self-absorbed to the extent that it is all about them; the only role that other people play is as helpers in their narcissistic fantasies or as antagonists.

Towards antagonists who threaten their fragile psychological defences, they need to lash out in the way we have seen — countless vilifications and demonisations.

And could any rational human being really believe that there is a “vicious, well-orchestrated and well-funded denialist machine.”? It’s absurd.

A rational human being couldn’t really believe it — but an emotional one, in the grip of narcissistic rage, must believe it as a part of a psychological defence of their egos.

After reading WUWT for years and some other blogs I have to agree that there are a lot more scientist, engineers, and mathematicians who are silent at work about CAGW but go to sites like WUWT to fight a guerilla war. The level of knowledge at WUWT is just too high to be anything but a hangout for high level science types. I find I really have to be on my toes at that site compared to any other I visit.

Jo’s comment that the government funded anti-science name-calling crowd thinks “deniers”, skeptics are old “will be gone soon” is really laughable. Outspoken skeptics are old because they have nothing to lose. The younger ones are keeping their mouths shut and identities secret while aiding the guerilla war.

The real danger to us skeptics are the brainwashed acolytes like Jennifer Kolar.

A former University of Colorado student who left academia for the clandestine world of environmental extremism was a key witness against an activist with the Earth Liberation Front…

Like many other ELF activists, Kolar described a path from academic promise to criminal infamy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from CU in 1995, a master’s in astrophysics in 1997, then spent two years working toward a Ph.D. in oceanography, according to university records.

Kolar testified that she got her start in activism as an undergraduate working with the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, volunteering with Rocky Mountain Animal Defense and teaching at a student environmental center on the CU campus.

… the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The two groups are responsible for more than 600 crimes since 1996, causing (by a very conservative FBI estimate) more than $43 million in damage. ALF’s “press office” brags that in 2002, the two groups committed “100 illegal direct actions” — like blowing up SUVs, destroying the brakes on seafood delivery trucks, and planting firebombs in restaurants….http://www.activistcash.com/organization_blackeye.cfm/oid/21

What an absolute waste of talent this nasty people are promoting!

Combine all that talent and all that $$$ and think what we as a civilization could have done! However the corporate giants are not at all interested in anything but the status quo – them at the top of the food chain and the politicians in their pocket. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and capitalists are to be sideline where ever and when ever possible. If you look at the blue prints of Agenda 21 in the USA it is in reality the modern version of a medieval village with the corporations taking the place of the aristocracy. Once you limit the ability to travel and the option of working for yourself you are no more than a serf. No wonder the corporations, unions and politicians all love Agenda 21. see: http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/index.html

For an example of how things really work:
Dwayne Andreas was CEO of the food giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. for decades. He was also top contributer to BOTH the Democrats and Republicans.

…”We’re the biggest [food and agriculture] company in the world,” Andreas explains. “How is the government going to run without people like us? …

The IPCC computer models have been in error. The include an H2O positive feedback based on the idea that warmer air has a higher water vapor capacity and more H2O means more warming being that H2O is the primary green house gas. Green house gasses operate as an radiative energy transfer insulator. So as the lower atmosphere warms the upper atmosphere must cool. It is in the upper atmosphere where most of earth’s IR radiation to space takes place. For the earth to experience a net gain in energy it must radiate less to space and vis versa. In the upper atmosphere as the air cools the capacity to hold H2O decreases so the amount of H2O decreases. As H2O levels decrease in the upper atmosphere its insulating effect decrease and the upper atmosphere warms up again. So in the upper atmosphere H2O acts as a negative feedback. As CO2 levels rise, H2O levels fall negating the effect of rising CO2. Negative feedback mechanisms are inherently stable as has been our climate relative to Waring amounts of green house gasses for more then a billion years. The proof is that life was allowed to evolve and we are here.

[…] An assessment of current alarmist propaganda:It's been obvious for some time, that the science behind the most alarming claims about the effects of any putative global warming, is not only unsustainable but indefensible.We still of course get the occasional paper, trying to resurrect an old scare, which has already been demolished, but as happened with both the Shakun and Gergis papers, the climate skeptics simply tear them to pieces.Not only hasn't the paper succeeded in clawing back any ground, but because it gets eviscerated in public, it actually becomes a propaganda liability.This is the reason we're seeing fewer of such alarmist papers. […]